It's June, so it must be the season to fine Alphabet billions of euros. According to Reuters' sources, a second big fine will be imposed on Google's parent company next week by the European Commission, this time for abusing its dominance of smartphone platforms.
In addition to the fine, the newswire reported, the Commission …

COMMENTS

It's not really their apps, it's Google Play Services

I had a Blackberry z10 and it ran most android apps but some would refuse to install without Google Play Services and, more annoyingly, more would install, pop up an error saying they needed it, then ran perfectly without it. It takes up loads of room, requires full permissions, updates itself without warning and I assume tells Mountain View whenever I have a bowel movement*.

Re: It's not really their apps, it's Google Play Services

Vanila OS base

Battling currently with Google Play trying to update applications I've in theory disabled on my S9+ so I'm looking forward to a clean open source OS that I don't have to have EITHER Google or Samsung versions of the applications which compete with the Linux compatible ones I run on my desktop. Looks like LineageOS 15.1 is reaching a stable point and it will be nice to get that loaded.

Re: Vanila OS base

Personally one of the main requirements for me is a stock OS on a phone. My previous phone was a Nexus 4 with stock Android and I recently upgraded to a Nokia 6 a few months ago, which is also running stock Android. (It's part of Google's Android One scheme). I find that when you're using the OS in its stock form without other manufacturer's apps and bundled bloatware running over the top, it runs really well. I've also got a Nexus 7 2013 tablet too, also running stock Android. Obviously this doesn't really address your comment of getting away from Google's and Samsung's software, but certainly if you leave Android as is without modifying it and installing unnecessary extras, it runs pretty well without issues

Re: Vanila OS base

most useful thing would be to legislate to prevent all the pre installed crud (be it telco / handset manufacturer added) being system (and so not removable by non root user) - as most consumers get handsets full of dross installed.

e.g. Facebook often added as system app FFS - I don't use FB and its a total pain to have to root a phone to get rid of an unwanted app plus risk of something going wrong as rooting breaks warranty

I'm sure lots of people are happy at FB by default, great - I understand its popular (and I assume some other pre installed dross), but just make it simple for us (who want a pared down phone) to uninstall junk.

Yes I know there are vanilla phones out there but they are expensive (& I can't justify big bucks on a phone) - and sadly most cheap and cheerful phones come with some amount of non removable dross.

.. and force the manufacturers to give security updates, not treating a "new" phone as something to never get a patch ever. If a phone is being sold then should be patches for at least 3 years after it is last on sale IMHO.

Good and we need manufacturers to stop preinstalling other bloatware like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Whatsapp and all the other privacy invading apps.If we want to install them, then the manufacturers can assume consent for data collection. Everybody knows were they then stand !

Good and we need manufacturers to stop preinstalling other bloatware like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Whatsapp

See the comment above from the tastefully monikered Fred West. You and I might want manufacturers and networks to stop preloading shite, but the EU's actions are actually about freeing up these other parties to dob as much shit on handsets as they wish.

But it must be GDPR compliant shit or even more fines. Compliance here means no assumption of permission, no pre-selected opt-ins, full declaration of any data gathered and the ability to uninstall unwanted crud.

What they (possibly inadvertently) give with one hand, they take away with the other. Overall this should benefit consumers.

It is easily GDPR compliant if it gathers information in a way that means it cannot be related to an individual. Loads of the advertising gumpf that these apps collect doesn't have to personally identify anyone.

I remember taking 3 passes deleting APKs and rebooting just to excise Facebook from my Xperia, it was so deeply hooked into the OS. Had to root the phone to do it. Or doing the same to remove useless duplicate mail, store, maps and more from my wife's Orange mangled San Francisco.

It was a happy day when Google started restricting how and what crap OEM's could peinstal. When I disable built in stuff on my current devices they stay disabled, even googles system services, without root. Then again I don't install malware like linkedin or Facebork.

Re: A sea of crapware

That would only work if vanilla Android would actually properly talk open standards. The fact that I need plugins to make applications work with caldav and carddav is rather illustrative of just what a scam the whole "open source" moniker is for Android.

Personally I would have preferred that the EU folk would just make that as mandatory as fine grained permission control ought to be.

Re: A sea of crapware

"I would much prefer that Google obligate handset users NOT to install any superfluous apps (Google's or anyone else's) and if necessary present users the choice during setup which ones they want."

They can install any old crap they want, and as much as they like as far as I'm concerned, so long as it is just installed and not part of the factory firmware image. They can pre-install their shite on the condition I can remove it if I choose.

I have a Galaxy Note and wonder just how many Galaxy Note users out there ever actually use any of the pre-installed Samsung apps. I have 25 Samsung and Google apps "disabled" but which can't be removed. There's probably more i could get rid off, but I'm never too sure what else might use the remaining shite as dependencies. And didn't Hangouts go EOL? That's still there and I can't delete it.

stimulate innovation and increase choice for consumers

Riiiiiiiiiight.

No utility to root your phone. If you want to root by building your own kernel, and disabling RIC, must unlock bootloader. If you unlock bootloader, you lose 25% of functionality. Hit the Intertubes and figure out which OEM libraries must be saved before unlocking the bootloader, so you can restore some functionality back.

300+ Google Services constantly running in the background. No obvious reason why or what for.

Android Assistant deciding that the photos you stored on your memory card - if you're lucky enough to have one - have too high resolution. Proceed to lower the resolution on all your photos, without asking for permission. Make them all look like goat ass.

Industrial-scale slurping. GPS Location Tracking enabled by default, making sure your battery drains before the end of the day. Also: We Know Where You've Been. OEM's love this feature as the batteries aren't replaceable. So you need to buy a new phone every year because the battery won't charge to 100% anymore.

I really, truly feel that my choices as a consumer have been vastly expanded. Not.

It took me 2 months of work to get my Sony phone working the way I want it to work. Slurp-O-Rama gone. One battery charge now lasts 2 days. Sorry, Sony. No new phone this year, or next.

Re: stimulate innovation and increase choice for consumers

Weird, as my Pixel 2 does literally NONE of those things... I think you just invented that list, or you bought a really bad entry level phone where the manufacturer subsided the cheap price by bundling all sorts of crap.

EU not content

With making websites shite by forcing intrusive cookie notices, and then still not content and made everything online shite with GDPR, they now want to make smartphones shite by allowing manufacturers and networks to not bundle Google apps, and load their shite instead.

This will only end badly for consumers, as clearly nothing in life is free, play services are included on top of AOSP as part of a deal, you can't assume taking the pay part and keeping the free part won't come with some other price (I suspect Android going closed source, manufacturers paying for Android, and passing that onto consumers and creating a huge fragmented market on the process..)

Re: EU not content

"Smartphones and PCs are totally different. How they are used, how they are serviced, their lifespan, their upgradability, their app model, everything essentially."

Perhaps they are, but they needn't be. They are both just computers running a UNIX-like operating system. The hardware in both ought to last for a decade or more and, these days at least, is probably powerful enough to still be useful at the end of that period unless you deliberately bloat your OS with a fresh waggon-load of badly written shit every year. Differences in physical size affect their use, but there's no reason why you couldn't plug a phone into a base-station and use a full-size keyboard and mouse. Nor is there any reason to tie one device to a walled garden and let the other run software from old-fashioned third parties.

Funnily enough, though, the big vendors prefer you to upgrade every few years and aren't above using update-starvation to force that issue. They also prefer you to buy two separate devices and synchronise everything by sharing it with their cloud storage. Finally, they would much prefer if you stopped speaking directly to those third-parties and instead used an app store where they get a cut for doing sweet fuck all.

Re: EU not content

> Sorry, but I'm old enough to reckon that Windows 10 is a UNIX-like operating system. It has been evolving in that direction for a couple of decades and was closer than some others even to begin with.

Yep, I totally second that observation. In another decade Windows will be a compatibility layer running on top of Linux, much like Wine is/used to be.

Re: EU not content...POSIX

"Sorry, but I'm old enough to reckon that Windows 10 is a UNIX-like operating system. "

A confusion there. Both Windows and Linux, along with Unix and QNX, are POSIX-compliant and have been for a long time, except for Winds 8 (which was a fustercluck anyway). For Windows 10, there is Windows Subsystem for Linux.

Re: EU not content

Re: EU not content

Yep, I totally second that observation. In another decade Windows will be a compatibility layer running on top of Linux, much like Wine is/used to be.

Well, knowing Microsoft, I'd expect *BSD rather than Linux, but same conceptual design. I've thought MS missed a good opportunity when the ReWind project forked off of Wine (and died soon afterwards). Since ReWind had stayed with the X11 licence that Wine was moving away from, MS could have picked it up to become a compatibility layer for MSWindows. These days it would be handy for them to have a Wine-type runtime to handle many of the legacy APIs they's like to remove from the core OS. Then the core could get cleaned up, making the system faster and more stable.

Of course, this would have risked some useful code making it's way into the Wine project (and probably ReactOS as well), and MS couldn't have that.

" I think people who complained about M/S then are also complaining about Google now."

Not everybody - there's a not small group who hates MS but praises Google whatever it does - there are of course those who praise MS whatever - it's still a kind of tribalism, never assess what the situation really is, and what are the benefits, just take a tribe, and sell your brain away.

Google & Contacts

Google Play / Playstore insists it needs access to my contacts to sync.

I discovered a permission somewhere and disabled it.

By default permissions are ON.

By default Google creates a copy of every phone contact on "Google Contacts" Every information added on phone. I didn't realise such a thing existed and is web accessible to anyone that has the google account details.

You should NOT have to create/use a Google (email) Account to use an Android phone.

Re: Google & Contacts

You don't have to root the phone. You really shouldn't root the phone, that ISA very bad thing to do from a security point of view.

If you really want to downgrade your phone, don't sign in during setup, and sideload install fdroid app store. Be very careful what you install however. When you live outside Google's relatively safe store, things aren't so nice. Fdroid is of course a safe haven, bit enabling sideload for that enables sideload for anything else too...

Re: Google & Contacts

"If you really want to downgrade your phone, don't sign in during setup, and sideload install fdroid app store. Be very careful what you install however. When you live outside Google's relatively safe store, things aren't so nice. Fdroid is of course a safe haven, bit enabling sideload for that enables sideload for anything else too..."

Once you have installed F-Droid, you can use it to install Yalp. If from that point on you only install apps from F-Droid or using Yalp I don't think that you are in any danger from rogue apps (at least, you are in no more danger than from using the Google Play Store directly).

Re: Google & Contacts

With sideloading enabled, you are always in danger. That malicious webpage that wants to install an app that clean your system?? This it's its primary atack vector, and disabling of sideloading (the default behaviour) the primary protection protection mechanism.

It's driving without seatbelts, it's fine and dandy until it all goes wrong.....

The sooner Google just remove sideloading the better I think... Of course evetyone will cry foul and blame Google (not malware writers) and claim monopoly not security, bit these people are bellends.

Re: Google & Contacts

It should be straightforward to do so and not require a whole evening and advanced skills to bring the device to a usable state after having taken the sort of precautions that would normally be associated with seriously illegal activities. :-(

Re: Google & Contacts

If you want to recover the system partition space they occupy you'll have a route challenge. I highly recommend not attempting to resize partitions so you won't really get the space back. Converting user apps to system can do that but just don't do it of you value security.

Do the easy thing, use apps settings to disable them. Malware laden devices might fight back but otherwise they vanish and user space they're using gets freed. Well, that works now...

Re: Most people think Chrome is the ONLY browser...

cr-app

I tried FF last year and the thing I really liked was being able to start a song or 70-minute mix on Youtube and have it keep playing while I looked at another app or locked the screen. The YT app and the other browsers (admittedly only tried Chrome and the AOSP default "Browser" so far) stop the music. The reason I don't bother to install it again is that running a web browser or playing music are not things that my phone needs to be able to do.

OTOH, right now I have 2 phones with Lineage 14.1 (making it possible to read this article ITFP) and suddenly neither can make a phone call because the godforsaken app won't run. "Phone has stopped" over and over again, even after a full wipe and clean reinstall. Lineage 15.1 was officially released for one of them, and it never makes a data connection-- so I had to downgrade-- but it still makes calls. I had to reflash it just to call up my carrier and have them associate my SIM with the other IMEI so I could go back to the phone that worked a week ago-- and now it doesn't call either. I'm guessing I need to "wipe it harder", or maybe there's something obscure that changed in the SIM that's throwing it off. It's like it mutated into the perfect anti-modem: we used to have to use the phone line to get on the net, now my internet connection is terrible at making phone calls.

n.b.

Opera is also in Play's app list. I forgot about it because I didn't keep using it because it also stopped the music.

also, I wiped it harder and it seems to be functioning again... sigh.

also, I lied. I really do need a browser, to use the ordinary WWW versions of ordinary things which they also have apps for, like checking the weather, and ignoring all those invitations to use their GOD DAMNED APP instead.

Adventures in a NEW Android 6 Phone

Overall, you can disable and de-permission most of the more obvious Google apps. But not the System-Updater: 'FirebaseInstanceIDService' which phones home constantly. Other notable mentions that can't be disabled are MTKLogger / MTKThermal / Regulatory & Safety [com.jrdcom.elabel] and [com.tcl.ota].

Its far harder to view running Apps & Services vs Android-4 too. You have to enable Developer-Options, then go there each time to see what's running etc. Next up Facebook... The Facebook-App can be uninstalled.. However, the Facebook-App-Installer and Facebook-App-Manager can't be uninstalled but CAN BE Disabled (Alcatel).

However, after doing this, almost no functionality exists on the phone anymore unlike Android-4. You can't even view photos taken with the Camera. Planning to visit F-Droid soon to look for a Firewall to block the rest. Hopefully we can find less-slurpy App replacement too... Any recommendations folks??? Maybe there are enough replacement apps and we can block everything else that looks suspect. But overall, its a fucking joke...

What a choice... This industrial Slurp or a Feature Phone. Thankfully Signal works ok. Had to be manually installed of course. Something like that would never be installed by default, unlike Gmail/Facebook. It has had to be side-loaded too, to get around not having Google-Play anymore. That means having to download it off Signal's website directly, and manually checking the download integrity by using Java Keytool along with a sha256 check.... Oh boy, what a world!

Re: Adventures in a NEW Android 6 Phone

Make sure to disable Google assistant as that records all of your voice and audio as well slurping from just about every other app, also Google calendar another large drain hole, Simple calendar is a better app that needs nothing from you.

Re: Adventures in a NEW Android 6 Phone

I use AFwall+ from f-droid but you need to Root your phone. If you're unfamiliar with rooting then find the forum for your phone on XDA forums and read everything in the Root and Backup sections before you continue.

YouTube also has good instructionals with links for software required to root.

Re: Adventures in a NEW Android 6 Phone

Another thumbs up for AFwall+

If you ever doubted Google was spying on everything you do; root your phone, install AFwall+ and block Gboard [the built in keyboard] from phoning home. Then sit back and watch in disbelief as AFwall+ blocks it from making dozens of attempts to connect to dozens of different IP addresses, almost every time you type something in an app.

Re: Adventures in a NEW Android 6 Phone

Re: Adventures in a NEW Android 6 Phone

Oh no! It looks as if you purchased one of the phones that Zuckerburg allowed the manufacturer low level access to.

Those two Facebook related system apps are a dead giveaway.

"The agreements, which date to at least 2010, gave private access to some user data to Huawei, a telecommunications equipment company that has been flagged by American intelligence officials as a national security threat, as well as to Lenovo, Oppo and TCL."

Re: Freetard Glory

i'd pay a premium for a phone with a root switch and no tracking, adware, bloatware, and other 'features', if the option existed. It doesn't, and if the EU is going to be useful and help get such an option, great.

Money is NOT the only payment method. Your personal data has value too.

Re: Freetard Glory

Pay nobody else for their work. Take everything for free and complain if anyone else expects anything for it.

The european model. Why it is such a sh*thole place to live!!

So, let's all follow the US model: pay through your nose for everything then complain it's not working as advertised. Sue everyone! Buy politicians to make more laws against the common people! Assume no responsability for your actions! USA! USA! USA!

New phone time. Question 1. Can it be rooted? If no, move to next phone. If yes, put on shortlist.

Rooting is absolutely critical, once you've dumped the bloatware, customised the way notifications work in Oreo, got titanium backup running, root cloak for those dumbass apps that thing checking for root is a thing, stopped that EU mandated nonsense that drops the volume every 20h of playtime.. there's no going back.

An unrooted phone is like buying a backpack that comes preloaded with a bunch of stuff you don't want, but can't take out, that triples its weight and halves the potential for useful utility.

I'm waiting for one of these....

Do what now?

Oh, you mean that shite that gets installed when you flash Gapps. No, sorry, none of that has ever been on my handset. F-Droid has all the apps I need, thanks. I even completely remove that poxy Jelly browser from my builds because I don't trust it. Icecat Mobile is much better.

The first thing I did when I got my new mobile phone was turn off internet access in it's many forms, and have only turned it on to get a few security updates, the second thing I did was disable google play and other crap.

I use the phone as a phone as I have other devices and means I prefer accessing the internet with and I only use a mobile to save paying $30au in line rental and make only a few calls. I would prefer a line phone to save carrying around and having to charge the thing, not to mention using a nice handset that is comfortable to hold nice against my ear and easy to hear..

About the only thing I will miss is the notepad and calendar, but could have purchased an electronic PIM years ago for $5.00.

And as most phone companies do not update their older handsets to newer operating system versions I am likely to never get another one. So don't waste your $ paying google.

reputation suicide.

Seems like a lot out trouble to avoid buying a dumb or feature phone...

Apparently, being seen with a dumb phone is akin to going to a trendy big city nightclub dressed as a Bay City Roller.

I don't have a reputation, and if I did I wouldn't give a damn, rather have something that doesn't drain it's battery inside half a day trying to report back my every movement and run a too high def for the size screen and cost almost as much as a real computer.

Keep the fruit, just replace the tree!

I do hope the EU get what they're asking for.

If you're doing security armour all the way from the UI to the metal, legally forcing you to allow people to replace parts of that chain, with code from manufacturers notorious for abandoning software, is going to be so much fun.

Note: This restriction is on the manufacturers. Not the users. The users can already change them. But the manufacturers want to make the choice instead of the users, because THEY want the user's data... Remind me who the EU are fighting for here, with no EU phonemaker..

"Secondly, Google stopped OEMs from running open Android devices"

Translation: It is evil that Google are not forced to give you their appstore so you don't have to write one when you copy their OS, like Amazon did.

"thirdly, they alleged financial incentives were given to operators and phone-makers to pre-install search"

See first point.

The free-range sheep watch the wolves attack the farmer, and cheer them on.

It’s simple, people...

Insulting too.

Yes

They can install any old crap they want, and as much as they like as far as I'm concerned, so long as it is just installed and not part of the factory firmware image. They can pre-install their shite on the condition I can remove it if I choose.

This idea, which is common to Google/Microsoft/Samsung/et al, that some apps have to be unremovable is strangely insulting. Why do I have to have software clogging my device that I won't ever use? By all means put it on the machine if they must. But forcing it to remain there? Why? What do they think they'll gain by insisting that Twitter or "Connect" are fixed into our devices? Should we want these things they are easy enough to obtain. An OS should make the device work. A mobile OS arguably needs the basic phone/text software as well. But beyond that there is no need to glue stuff in there.

Re: You people are funny

People want cheap phones

Cheap phones are 'cheap' and 'phones', google / android offering are expensive data gathering honeypots, they want you hooked and online as much as possible. It's why FB, instagranny, etc. are pre installed, it's the raison d'etra, phone is now secondary, only beneftting the Carrier Network, while all else benefits Carrier Network, manufacturer and Google in either your cash or your data.

So painless and convenient, you don't even realise you are being milked, many even find it pleasurable

You already pay for your phone on contract or outright otherwise, the main body of the android O.S is only partly Google funded, companies have just gotten used to having a customers pay bills <and</b> get customer usage data free like a regular bonus.

I think it's the wrong people who are confused as to what they've been getting free for a long time....

A pity that EUcrats don't understand tech.

Few years back EE sold a nice ZTE-made model that was popular with rooters -- the next generation of the model was re-engineered to try to stop all that.

Granted, the EE phones were probably slightly subsidised at the time of purchase -- but EE recouped that from the vast majority of buyers.

At least at the expiry of contract, a phone you bought should belong to you, be unlocked and open to uninstalling apps and installing whatever OS you want.

In most industries the tech isn't advanced enough to allow makers to screw with your purchase, post-purchase. It's becoming clear that the same must be applied to the tech industries urgently before the tech evolves further and becomes more prevalent in our lives.